Straight talking on business, brands, technology and employee engagement.

A wider look at employee benefits - What’s going on in Silicon Valley and what can we afford?

Rachel Woodhatch at Nissan Motor Co Australia gave me this link back in November last year and I’ve used it several times since. It’s a great infographic produced by those nice people at ResumeBear.com showing the range of employee perks employed by some of Silicon Valley’s most cutting edge dot coms.

They’re certainly more adventurous than those we normally see and many, if not the majority are unpractical in time, space and money for all but the wealthiest of organisations, but they certainly get you thinking about employee benefits in much wider sense than the traditional life insurance, pension, medical insurance list.

“Good” employee benefits please the CFO and the HRD

Not all employee benefits have to be expensive, in fact I always say that the definition of a good employee benefit is that it is worth much more to the employee than it costs the employer. If it isn’t then the employer might just as well give the employee money. Good employee benefits should make sense to both the CFO and the HR Director - they should be a no -brainer in terms of bang for their buck.

Here are ten of the less common employee benefits that we offer at Asperity - in no particular order (click here for the full list of over 25). All of them are affordable to small organisations, just like us.

1. Staff share scheme - Our staff own 5% of the company. On our last investment, they shared £1m between them, so it’s real.
2. A really good performance recognition culture – we’re not afraid to say thank you.
3. Free private doctor service if you’re not feeling well.
4. Special enhanced discounts for high-street shops, reserved especially for our own staff.
5. Monthly staff lottery - 1st prize £1,000, 2nd £500 and 3rd £250 (in UK, similar in US and Aus). We pay the tax as well. (People love this one!!)
6. Extra day off on your birthday.
7. £250 bonus if you suggest someone who we recruit.
8. For mobile staff – an iPhone and a MacBook Air.
9. Quarterly Business Update – every 3 months we have an afternoon out to review company performance and what’s coming next
10. Company provided fruit, snacks, nibbles, bread and breakfast items. Drinks fridges on all floors.

And, of course, our staff also get the biggest and best employee discount service, a Childcare payment service that saves you £933 a year on childcare costs and the ability to save 40% by getting a bike for all/part of the journey to work through a special programme (all three are products that we provide to our clients).

What’s important when thinking about employee benefits is not to think of them as a luxury perk, to be discarded as soon as any hard times are coming, but to choose the ones that really fit your culture and workforce, that excite them and make them love the place they work at and that make good financial sense in good times and in bad.